Welcome to our review of Ary and the secret of Seasons, a very promising game that is sadly plagued with technical issues…
Journey across the magnificent world of Valdi!
Ary and the Secret of Seasons is an award-winning adventure game following a young girl named Aryelle, or Ary, as she journeys across the great world of Valdi. By becoming the Guardian of Winter, Ary gains the ability to manipulate the seasons around her. Ary will learn to control the seasons and use them to defeat enemies, overcome obstacles, and solve complex puzzles on her adventure across Valdi.
Long ago, the world of Valdi was threatened by an evil mage. After a great struggle, he was defeated by the Legendary Warrior and sealed inside the Vault, imprisoned for all eternity. To ensure the mage’s imprisonment, four great sages swore to keep watch and protect the Vault. They formed the original Guardians of Seasons, a secretive organization now steeped in history and legend.
After a mysterious force throws the seasons of Valdi into disarray, Ary decides to assist the Guardians of Seasons and sets out to find the source of the mayhem. Using her wits and courage, Ary will have to overcome monstrous enemies, secret plots, and stuffy traditions to save Valdi and bring balance to the world once more.
Ary resembles the classic Zelda inspired puzzle that meets dungeons game and is a very promising game in itself. Some really fine puzzles and an overall classic approach to the action-adventure genre with dungeons, enemies, and bosses. It throws in some really interesting mechanics like the ability to change the seasons which sadly does not get used enough in my personal opinion but I do love the way it gets abused in a way once you get that slingshot mechanic as a weapon.
Sadly the game is majorly flawed on the technical side and to sum up some of the issues I had… Floating characters, grunting characters, obvious misses during battle that ended up dealing damage, and vice versa, … Shaking screens when nothing happened, colors outside of characters, … I think I pretty much had everything one can think up and it happened to me.
While Ary is pretty straight forward as a game, so is everything. Puzzles are never truly mind-boggling or way too easy. The game does give you a decent run for its money though I admit it might not be for some. Personally, I’d even say the game needs a patch or two before it truly becomes great and that is once again its biggest flaw. At its current price point, with the bugs, it is not worth the 40 euros it is costing.
In conclusion, Ary and the secret of Seasons is a tough nut to swallow. Clearly a decent game in its core but so much damage gets taken when you consider everything wrong with it… I did enjoy the game, I enjoyed playing with the seasons and solving puzzles but I hated the cackling by some characters, the bugs, …. It truly is annoying to give a score when the downsides and upsides are so clearly influential.
I decided to give two scores to the game, first the game and its intentions, which is a solid 8,5 in score.
Next is the game in its current version with all the bugs and flaws and sadly that very nice score instantly drops to a mere 6 out of 10….
